When
Mika Utzon Popov
was studying fine art at the National Art School in Sydney in the early 1990s, he enjoyed talking to his grandfather in Denmark about life in Australia. One building came up quite often: the Sydney Opera House. After all,
Jørn Utzon
had designed it.

“I used to tell him about it," Popov says of the building his grandfather never saw completed. “You go down there and people are so in awe of this building. I think that was the greatest joy he ever got out of having made it. I’m still surprised how much it touches me. It’s always been a source of inspiration [to me]; probably detrimentally sometimes, as a goalpost out there that’s just impossible to reach."

Popov is the son of Utzon’s daughter Lin and architect Alex Popov. Lin also studied art in Sydney while her father was designing the Opera House but she moved back to Denmark in 1966 after Utzon’s controversial departure from that project. She and Alex married and raised their children there before separating. Mika Popov came to live in Sydney with his father for his final two years of school. It was about this time that
Tim Storrier
inspired his pursuit of art.

“I was a 17-year-old and I wanted to explore the world and be an artist," Popov recalls. “Tim is an incredible draughtsman, and he said, ‘well, you have to work very hard first to get the tools and your drawing right’."

Drawing forms a substantial part of Popov’s art practice, which in recent years has broadened to include site-specific works for new or renovated buildings. They include a series of stainless steel doves for a hotel in Sydney’s Potts Point and a six-panel installation for the foyer of a North Bondi apartment block. He was in Spain in September to discuss a tapestry for a new church in Barcelona. “It’s the spaces that dictate the solution to me," he says.

In 2006, after many years travelling around Europe, he moved back to Sydney permanently with his wife Kirsten Fazio. Their son Eero was born the day after a 2008 memorial service to mark Utzon’s death. But Eero will not miss the next big family occasion, a concert on October 27 to celebrate the Opera House’s 40th birthday.